GABRIEL (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 4) (11 page)

Again he was tempted to remove his earcuff, but he was now close enough to analyze her eye color, so he felt obliged to try that method of reading her first.

"Shara?" She glanced up at him. Her eyes were hazel, but more brown than green. As her
basic
hazel color was more green, he wondered if some traces of desire might still be lingering. "Do I owe you another apology?"

She returned her gaze to the tempometer. "Of course not."

"I can't explain what happened. I really meant to please you."

"I'd rather you forget about it."

Gabriel took the tempometer out of her hands and set it aside. "I can't forget about it. Did I hurt you?"

She cocked her head at him. "Not at all."

"Were you left unsatisfied? I'm not normally so inconsiderate—"

"What is this?
A test?" Shara shed her cool façade. "I'm trying to be casual, the way I might have reacted if I hadn't been raised by a Terran mother. But I can't sit here and dissect our coupling as if I do that sort of thing with strange men all the time. I don't! I have been with exactly two men, both of whom I thought I had an emotional bond with. And
neither
of whom ever caused me to behave the way I just did with you. I don't understand what happens when you touch me but I don't seem to have much control over my... my...
biological urges
once you do. And that does
not
please me in the slightest!"

The thought crossed her mind that he possessed a power he had denied having but this time she held her tongue. "Now, I accept this incident as being partially my fault but in the future, I'd appreciate it if you did not take advantage of my weakness."

Gabriel tried to sort out everything she'd just confessed and correlate it with her eye color. If she had been lying, the color would have been drab olive rather than hazel. Thus, he deduced she was being honest but the truth embarrassed her. She reached for the tempometer and he moved it behind him. "You didn't answer my question."

Looking down at a drawing, she murmured, "Which question?"

He leaned closer and touched her chin with his forefinger. "Look at me." She frowned but raised her lashes. "Were you left unsatisfied?" He watched with fascination as her eye color altered to a rich, warm brown.

"Why is it so important?" she asked in a breathy voice.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I'm just trying to understand what happened to me. I offered you a gift of pleasure and it was very ungentlemanly of me not to be certain you received it. Shara, you're not the only one in this tent having trouble controlling your behavior. You say my touch disturbs you, yet I can't seem to keep my hands off you. I have coupled with enough females that I can't claim inexperience, as you have. And yet I don't remember ever losing myself so completely in the act that I didn't know if I satisfied my partner."

She turned her head away. There was no way she could admit that, even unsatisfied, he had given her the most moving physical experience she'd ever had.

He stroked her flushed cheek and urged her to face him again. "I could do better... whenever you wish." He closed the slight gap between their mouths.

"No!"
Shara exclaimed, scooting backward. "You're doing it to me again. What happened between us isn't some mystery that you have to work to understand. It's called lust—a strong chemical attraction—and that is
not
something I want in my life. Giving in to it is against everything I believe in. We are not going to do any more kissing and that's my last word on the subject. Now, if you don't want to help, at least don't hinder me. I want to get out of this time while that heater still has energy in it."

He didn't agree to her declaration but he accepted the subject change for the moment. "It's solar. Unless there's an extended eclipse, we'll stay comfortable enough. Also, the ice and snow should provide us with plenty of water.

"Food could be a problem, however. I only brought enough compressed meals to last a week for two people. I have a protective suit for poisonous atmospheres, but it wasn't meant to protect against cold this extreme. Nor do I have anything else that would allow me to remain outside long enough to hunt for fresh game. The wartbulls have probably been devoured by other animals, so we can forget that. Unfortunately, one of the reasons they and other creatures faced extinction at this time was an extreme shortage of food."

Once again Shara was relieved that he had forced his company on her. She hadn't thought to bring food, had nothing in her bag that offered protection from the raw elements they had encountered and even if she had brought a weapon, she wasn't sure she could kill anything, even if it meant her survival. Dealing with adverse situations was apparently part of his normal routine. For his experience, she was grateful enough to forgive him for almost everything else.

To herself, she admitted that concern for their wellbeing was not the primary reason she wanted out of that time. She was anxious to escape to a time where she could keep a safe distance from him—a time with lots of open,
warm
space and plenty of people.

The scientist in her attempted to analyze what had happened. Though she had previously felt attraction, even strong desire, mindless lust was completely unfamiliar to her. She hadn't known it could strip her good sense and turn her into a wanton without her conscious approval. In a way though, she wished he
had
satisfied her more fully. Then perhaps she wouldn't be even now fighting the urge to move closer to him.

She should not have been aroused at all. There had been no gentle foreplay or coaxing of her desire. There were no words of admiration, let alone devotion. Now that she gave it more thought, there had been few words of any kind... with the exception of his straightforward offer and her unhesitating acceptance.

She should have been able to warm his body without being overwhelmed with desire. She should have been able to resist satisfying the need to feel him inside her.

He'd been aggressive, somewhat rough and so hurried that she should have been disgusted. There were a lot of
shoulds
and none of them had mattered at the time.

At least he had admitted to a certain bewilderment also. She hoped he would accept her decision not to explore the attraction between them any further. As soon as she had the thought, she felt a twinge of regret. Her scientific curiosity wanted to examine it until she understood how it worked. She knew instinctively though that she lacked the ability to impersonally study the feelings without involving her heart.

The sharing of one's body should have more meaning than a biological release and coupling without an emotional bond went against her personal morals.
There.
She felt better after repeating her beliefs to herself. She would remind herself of those beliefs whenever the weakness came over her.

If that didn't work, she would recall the fact that he was only with her because of her tempometer and not due to any sincere personal interest, which put him in the same category as her other two lovers. She was simply the available body to him.

If that were still not enough, there was the most important reason of all not to give in to the weakness. He intended to stop her from completing her mission. Her one foray with him into the halls of lust let her know she could be controlled by her own passion and she didn't put it past him to use any method available to achieve his goals over hers.

If he tried to kiss her again, she would force herself to refuse and hope he was convinced that seduction was a waste of time with her.

The future of Innerworld depended on her remembering that Gabriel Drumayne was her enemy.

Chapter 5

The contents of Gabriel's satchel continued to amaze Shara as the day wore on. The compressed meals he referred to looked like thin crackers and could be consumed in that form if necessary. However, the addition of melted snow and a few seconds in his collapsible cooker turned the crackers into tasty vegetable omelets. He also had a choice of several powders to mix with more melted snow to make soups and drinks. He explained that he had the equipment to create a limited supply of water, but that it wasn't necessary to waste what he'd brought under the circumstances. And, of course, they had his seemingly endless supply of Caresses.

She found using his portable sanitary unit embarrassing, but more practical than baring her bottom outdoors to relieve herself. At least he had been considerate enough to bundle himself in his sleeping pouch and go outside for the minute it took her to use the unit. She assumed he took care of his own needs while he was out there. Nature definitely gave men a few advantages when it came to survival.

By the time the sun slipped below the horizon, they had reviewed and analyzed Lantana's notes and checked and rechecked what Shara had done, yet they hadn't been able to discern her error.

Underlying it all had been a current of crackling tension that had both of them jumping at the sound of the other's voice and being overly cautious about their movements.

Frustrated, tired and cramped, Shara sighed aloud. "There must be something missing from his notes."

"Considering his advanced age, that could be a possibility. I'd suggest we start looking for what is
not
written here, like the effect of external temperatures. Why don't we have our evening ration of food and get some sleep? Maybe we've been at it too long to see clearly."

She nodded and set aside the tempometer belt and notes but she couldn't set aside her fears as easily. In theory, it had all seemed so simple. In reality, she might never get back to her own time, let alone fix something that happened before. If they didn't figure out what went wrong, they could soon be facing slow death by starvation. To get her mind off the gloomier possibilities, she asked him to tell her about another one of his adventures.

He gave it some thought as he prepared their meal then said, "You might find my very first journey interesting. I was young, mind you, and lacked practical experience, but I thought I could handle anything. Rather than visit a culture that had been written up in detail, I wanted to uncover something totally new, right away.

"I chose a settlement on a small planet in the Telvar system, where the inhabitants were a humanoid species on the lower end of the evolutionary scale. What interested me most was that they supposedly lacked the power of speech, as well as any telepathic ability. You remember what I told you about my childhood, so you can imagine how enticing a completely silent culture would be to me. I was determined to find out how they communicated.

"I had heard tales of journeyors allowing primitive tribes to believe they were gods and I had sworn I would never do something so unethical. I was prepared to put these people at ease and show them I was not much different from them as soon as I arrived.

"When my ship landed, however, I never even made it outside before they attacked. A small army of the local residents surrounded the ship and tried to beat it to death with sticks. The brief information I had found regarding their evolutionary level seemed accurate. They were short, with almost no necks or foreheads, and had arms long enough to rest on all fours. The men and women were both covered with hair but their faces and general forms were decidedly humanoid.

"For the next two days, they continued to bang on the outside of the ship. Replacements came to relieve the original attackers then the replacements were relieved in turn. I felt like I was sitting inside a metal drum. Even after I plugged my ears, the vibration from the noise was driving me insane. I refused to give up on my first journey but I wasn't about to leave the ship and be instantly killed either. I kept thinking they'd get tired and back off long enough for me to show them I had come in peace but it didn't look like they were going to give me that chance."

Shara took a plate of food from his hand but her attention was on him. "What did you do?"

He shrugged and made a slight face. "I took off my jammer to find out just how dangerous they were. At first, because I didn't pick up any mental voices, I thought something had happened to my ability. Then an image flashed in my mind and I realized they thought in picture form. They all had a similar picture in mind.

"Apparently they thought the ship was a sort of giant nut that had fallen from a tall tree and they were trying to crack it open to get to the food inside."